Shooting in the heat 7/20/2011

Out shooting last night in the heat. A lot of bugs to go along with humidity. Headed out towards Poynette to drive the back roads. I knew that the sun was going to turn into a deep red ball of fire and wanted to find a good place to set up for a sweeping landscape shot. Along the way I stopped for interesting subjects but forgot about the effects of bringing a cold camera (air conditioned truck) into extreme heat.......the lens glass will fog up. So, I got a few good shots that appear to be in heavy fog so all was not lost. After that I turned off the air and suffered in the heat so my camera could get back to a hellish room temperature of 101 degrees(heat index).
Looking for sweeping landscapes is a little more difficult these days due to the height of the corn. A solution to that would be to jump up on the roof or hood of the car but last time I did that my thumb got slammed in the door that I had used to get up on the roof..........so needless to say there was no roof jumping.
I finally found a nice shot with cornfields and a nice row of telephone poles. The sun was still pretty bright so I used a 3 stop neutral gradient filter to darken that area of the photo. Low bright sun (if you are shooting into it) plays havoc with camera exposure meters so you need to alter your exposure.
As I was walking to the back of the truck I noticed the view through my back tinted window. I re-positioned my tripod and not caring about exposing the foreground got off some pretty interesting shots using the window as my filter. The photos look pretty good on the camera's LCD screen. We'll see how they turned out when I process them.
Took a few more shots before the sun dropped and then drove to another area so I could get that 15-30 minute post sunset sky that is really incredible on these hot nights.
I am heading up to the cabin this weekend for some wildlife landscape shooting. Hope the wood ticks are gone by now.